Uvalde report and 'NRA Math': Why nearly 400 'good guys with guns' couldn’t stop one bad guy
A report on the Uvalde school shooting released over the weekend left some questioning the accuracy of the National Rifle Association’s long-standing mathematical equation: “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”
The Texas House committee report on the shooting that left 19 children and two teachers dead found that nearly 400 law enforcement officers were on the scene but failed to halt the slaughter. The Texas Tribune referred to the size of the police presence at Robb Elementary School as “a force larger than the garrison that defended the Alamo.”
And yet, this collection of good guys with guns failed to stop one bad guy with a gun before he murdered 21 people.
Introducing the easy-to-follow rules of ‘NRA Math’
So what went wrong? Why did the NRA's tried-and-true equation fail? As an expert on what’s known as “NRA Math,” I think I can explain.
The problem in Uvalde, and apparently in most mass shootings in America, is that the NRA formula was not precisely followed. The gun rights organization, which would let a person marry a gun before it would approve a law restricting gun purchases, has said very specifically that “a bad guy with a gun” can only be stopped by “a good guy with a gun.” That’s one bad guy, one good guy.
Variations of that equation have been tweeted by the NRA in February and January and December (just before Christmas!) and last August and over and over before.
You have to follow the formula, people
So in Uvalde, it’s clear the problem was that, according to the report released Sunday, there was “a bad guy with a gun” and 376 “good guys with guns.” That’s not how the formula works. If you’d had 376 bad guys with guns – an even "bad guy with gun”/“good guy with gun” ratio – things presumably would’ve worked just as the NRA has always promised.
(Sunday night, a gunman began shooting people at a shopping mall food court south of Indianapolis when he was shot and killed by a “good Samaritan” who was armed. Technically, that’s the one good guy vs. one bad guy scenario, except in this case, the bad guy killed three people before the good guy shot him. I don’t believe the NRA’s “the only thing that stops a bad guy” formula includes a variable that stands for “acceptable number of fatalities,” but maybe I missed that part.)
There are plenty of other examples of perfectly logical NRA Math.
71,100,000 guns > 393,300,000 guns
If there’s one thing the NRA believes it’s that Americans need more guns. Way more guns. Swimming pools filled with guns.
If you look at data from the 2017 Small Arms Survey, you’ll see the estimated “total civilian-held legal and illicit firearms” in the United States is 393,300,000. Second to America is India, which has an estimated 71,100,000 legal and illegal firearms and a population more than four times that of America.
Americans can't handle their guns. Time to repeal the 2nd Amendment.
Regular math would say the United States already has more than five times as many guns as No. 2 India. But regular math is for ninnies. NRA Math says 71 million is greater than 393 million, and thus America must produce more and more guns to win the global firearms race.
Gun manufacturing jumped 187% in 10 years
Matthew McConaughey: New gun law will save innocent lives
I’m a member of the NRA. I advocated for Congress to pass gun reforms
Speaking of making more guns, a recent report by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives found that from 2000 to 2020, the number of “domestically manufactured firearms per 100,000 persons in the U.S. increased 187%.” That makes sense because the U.S. population increased by 18% during that same time frame, and per my Textbook of NRA Math, 187% = 18%.
The minimum number of guns we should produce is 6.7 million/year
Some Americans look at the vast number of guns already in the hands of Americans and then look at the vast number of shootings. If they’re not learned in the ways of NRA Math, they might think something ridiculous like: “Wow, that’s probably more than enough guns. How about we bring the number of new guns made each year down to zero?”
Well, I have great news. According to the ATF report: “At no point since 2011 has there been a year where less than 6,731,958 firearms were manufactured for domestic consumption.”
NRA Math says 6,731,958 = 0. So we’re right where we need to be!
NRA Math says don’t worry about all the children getting killed
A recent analysis of data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, found that from 2019 to 2020, firearm-related deaths among children and adolescents increased 29.5%, “more than twice as high as the relative increase in the general population.”
The NRA and its many Republican supporters would like you to please view that seemingly startling figure through the lens of NRA Math.
It’s quite simple: A 29.5% increase in firearm-related deaths of children and adolescents = Worth it to keep selling guns and getting people to believe a good guy with a gun is the answer to everything.
More from Rex Huppke:
►Confused by abortion laws, anxious about intimacy? It's clear. We must ban sex.
►Harrison Ford turns 80, and here are all the reasons we should assume he's immortal
►Can Thor's naked butt unite a divided America? Yes. Yes it can.
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Uvalde report shows the fallacy of the NRA's good guy with a gun idea
